World Of Quotes

Quotes, Sayings, and Proverbs

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to “put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty to reporting”.Thus, if a legend told of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would hastily add “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a loony, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like: “His mighty steed was fast as the wind, on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” any loose talk about a beloved having a face that could launch a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed own a very large seaport. Patrician Olaf II was eventually killed during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The Pen is mightier than the Sword”.In his memory it was decided that the proverb would from now on include the phrase: “only if the Sword is very small and the Pen very sharp.”